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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Montreal photo booths

I'm not sure if the photo booths displayed below are unique to Montreal. The uninspired branding of these booths suggests that (a) the maker had too much to drink the night before ordering the signs or (b) he figured PHOTOS was one of those English words that was also French and therefore would spare his investment from being repeatedly vandalized.

The photo booth at Snowdon metro station

But what is most interesting about these photo booths are the people pictured on the side. A friend tipped me off to the fact that some of the people pictured on the outside of the booth appear on several machines from different eras.

For instance, the guy below appears in black and white outside the photo book at the Biodome (near the bathrooms downstairs). He also appears in color outside the photo book at Snowdon metro station (near the turnstiles).

"It's the same guy, Dave!"

I hope there is a good reason the same guy appears in different machines, in different parts of town, and in different eras. My fear is that the guy is being held captive by sadistic photo booth distributors who trot him out in front of the photo booth's blinding light every 15 years in some kind of sick Dorian-Gray-inspired fantasy.

3 comments:

If you have a chance, go to Berri metro. There are 2 in one corner, a b/w one and and colour one, with the b/w ones being of earlier vintage. I think the booths are on the orange level.

(As an aside, it might be worth looking into how many of the booths in subway stations are on the paid-up side of the ticket booths. The ones I mentioned, plus one I espied earlier that day in Laurier metro were of the "pay first, shoot later" variety. (The Laurier one, btw, features the new, unimproved, exterior design. Luckily for eagle-eyed trivialists the models remain the same.))

The other day I wondered if I dare cross through the looking glass by contacting the distributor and volunteering myself as one of the regular models. I figure that if we confront them with the fact that we've penetrated the public face of the high-stakes world of photo-boothdom they'll have no choice but to reward us with lifetime contracts. Something like we barge past the receptionists and various handlers they put there to deflect all the other jokers with their obviously phony "But Sir, I told you (s)he's not in!", look the bastard straight in the eye as we toss a nicely-appointed photo album at him, striking him in the belly causing him to fall back heavily into his rich Corinthian leather swivel chair (cue whoosh of air escaping the upholstering), our balled fists backed up with a calmly-growled "The jig is up, Bub."

I'm not sure I want to go there, though. I kinda enjoy being in the dark about the inner workings of the cutthroat world of photo booth modeling.

I'm from Montreal, and looking for a black and white photo booth. There used to be one at the Plamondon metro station back when this blog was posted, but it has since been removed. Do you know if the black and white booth is still at the Berri metro, or at the biodome? (or anywhere else for that matter)